Kentucky coach John Calipari is not hiding. His favored spot at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Main Street is on the counter stool right there in front of the huge picture window. This is, all but literally, Lexington’s fishbowl.

This is where he drinks his coffee and indulges his guilty pleasure (doughnuts, of course). And this is where he spoke to Sporting News at length to discuss what has become—primarily because he is the coach and partly because he has succeeded in attracting and producing elite talent—college basketball’s most debated program.

During his college coaching career, which includes stops at UMass and Memphis, Calipari hasn’t always had rosters stacked with “one-and-done” players. But he has been a constant winner—even if there have been various forms of controversy along the way. At Kentucky, constantly reloading with multiple players who have NBA dreams (and the talent to fulfill them) has given lovers and haters of the Wildcats plenty to talk about. His interview with SN:

SN: You’re in your third year. It wasn’t an easy decision for you to leave Memphis, so as you sit here now, do you think you made the right decision?

CALIPARI: Yes. It doesn’t mean it was an easy decision because what we had going at Memphis, what we were doing for young people, what we did for that city, the connection we had with people in that city—it wasn’t ever going to be easy. But the pinnacle of our profession, of what I do, is right here.

When I go back to players, there’s no better place to present to young people than here. You’re under a microscope. Some of the stuff that goes on in other places cannot go on here. Just, you can’t. Players can’t hide here on the basketball court. There’s no rock, there’s no crack big enough. You’ve got to be able to play.

The fan base is what you dream about in coaching—until you’re here. And then you almost have to laugh about it, or it’ll overwhelm you. You’ve got to take them for what they are, which are passionate basketball fans who watch the tape three times.

You deal with all that. But, there’s no better place for me to help young people reach their dreams. Massachusetts and Memphis are special to me and my wife. Both my daughters went to UMass. My son may end up going to UMass. I think he’s going to want to play for me, but that being said, this is different.

SN: You talked about how it’s good for the players to be in this environment—does it affect your ability to coach them because they are so revered here?

CALIPARI: No. I think what it does is prepare them, if they’re ever going to be professional: This is how you’re going to be treated, now deal with it. And the other side, the up and down of this is, when you’re not playing well, these people will kill you. Get used to it.

So now, all of a sudden, Terrence Jones plays poorly against Indiana: “Get rid of him. Throw him off the team.” Or Marquis Teague isn’t coming along as quickly as you would think, now he stinks: “Don’t start him. Start Doron Lamb.” And they’ve got to read it. Other places it may not be said. Here, it will be said.

FROM SPORTING NEWS

So I don’t think it hurts me in any way. Plus, I don’t pay attention to it. I’m going to coach them how I coach them.

SN: You’ve had different types of teams at Massachusetts and Memphis that had a lot of success, but now you’ve had three consecutive freshman-dominated teams at Kentucky and your rep is all you’ve done for 30 years is coach freshmen.

CALIPARI: That is because you have to put the disclaimers on why we won. Hopefully, my teams historically have defended this way. All my teams could play fast, but they could all grind it out. Played very little zone. And they’ve shared the ball. You could see there was an organization to how we played offense.

But they’ve all been different. How we play was based on the team. I never have “Cal Ball” and all that. I don’t know how we’re going to play. I take the guys I have and I say, “OK, what’s the best way for us to play?”

SN: Getting to the point where you started stacking up these freshmen, was it just opportunity that led you to this cycle where you have elite freshmen year after year?

CALIPARI: Here’s what they’re not—they’re not “all one-and-dones.” That is the disclaimer so you don’t have to say, “Boy, he really gets guys better. Their program, their style, prepares kids.” You’re telling me that Eric Bledsoe was a “one-and-done”? You’re telling me Daniel Orton was a “one-and-done”? You’re telling me Shawne Williams, when I was in Memphis, was a “one-and-done”? Can you tell me who thought that? Because they need to be drug-tested.

DeMarcus Cousins, there was no way anybody thought he’d leave after a year, he’d be mature enough to go do it. No one thought it. John Wall, it was pretty square. But they didn’t know Derrick Rose was going to turn out the way he turned out. Where was he rated as a high school player?

SN: Four or five (in the country).

CALIPARI: Six. OK. He was rated six. So did those other guys all go? He went one (in the NBA draft).

We’re trying to get young people who I think have the talent and ability, the toughness, the physical toughness, to play in a situation like that. To compete for championships—national and league and all the other things—be everybody’s Super Bowl, and not faze them. It isn’t for everybody, and I tell kids that.

I’m recruiting the best players we can recruit. I’m not recruiting for some list or some ranking.

SN: How do you identify them?

CALIPARI: I watch them, and I think if they can make us better ...

SN: But there has to be a starting point. You can’t watch every kid. So there’s got to be somebody, or some apparatus ...

CALIPARI: Well, here’s what I would tell you: The longer you’re in this position and the longer you take care of kids, you’ll have AAU coaches, high school coaches, people in the community, people in Europe—you’ll have NBA personnel telling you about kids and saying, “Hey, Cal, this kid’s perfect for you.” So that may be the start of it. The whole thing is about relationships, but here’s what’s changed in those relationships: The Internet—the social networking, the texting, the Facebook—has changed our job. Where before you could go screw a kid and not worry about it; well, that kid’s talking now to everybody. You know who else is? His parents. So if you lie to a kid, they’re writing books. Whatever you tell them, you better do. It’s out there.

I’m not going to badmouth another school. I never talk about other programs. I tell them walking in, “We will never speak about another program—unless it’s positive.” Then I say, “Now, they all talk about us.” And inevitably, the parents say, “They do.” And that’s OK. It shows you we’re the ones they’re worried about.

SN: How important is it to you to win an NCAA championship? In the end, if you’re going to be a success here, don’t you have to win at least one?

CALIPARI: It depends on how you’re being judged. If it’s solely on winning the national title, then you better win one. I’m not judging myself on that. Now, everyone else might. But my whole thing will be, “Do I have my team ready for that postseason run? Are we ready to compete?” It’s one-and-done. It’s not best-of-seven. It’s not best-of-five. It’s not best-of-three. It’s one game.

But I will say if you’re up at bat enough, you give yourself the best chance of doing it. That’s why you come to coach here.

But my thing to you will be this: If we ever won a national title and no player was drafted, I would be excited for our fans, excited for our school and our program, but I’d be disappointed.

SN: This is one of those unlikely scenarios, both in real life and the nature of how you’ve run the program. But what if you won a championship with seven guys who weren’t NBA prospects? It’s never really happened, but ...

CALIPARI: It will never happen. You’re kidding yourself. For anybody to act like they’re going to coach ’em up, take second-level players and compete for national titles—dude is a liar. You have to have two or three NBA players on your team to win a national title.

SN: But you’re also creating a false scenario on the other side, because if you win a national championship and they are NBA prospects, they’re going to be drafted. They’d all have to go out and rob a bank the next day to not get picked.

CALIPARI: I could convince them to stay.

SN: What if they really wanted to stay? What if, like the Florida kids, they wanted to chase history?

CALIPARI: Well, they’d have to explain to me why they want to stay. Like Patrick Patterson had to. “I want to stay.” OK, well, you tell me why. And if it’s logical, I’d say, “Yeah.” If the kid’s the No. 1 pick in the draft, you’re going.

SN: He ended up going ninth. Legend has it that he would have been No. 1 if he’d left after his sophomore year.

CALIPARI: Well, that’s legend. I don’t believe that. But you know what? To each his own. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m telling you how I feel.

It’s not about me winning more games. It’s not about my records. It’s not about me trying to win more games than this guy, or win 800 games, 900 games or 1,000—it ain’t about that. This thing, as long as the focus is on those kids—how do I get them to grow as young men?

Some will be able to leave after a year. Some may stay two, some are three and some are four. They’re all different.

"It’s not about me winning more games. It’s not about my records. It’s not about me trying to win more games than this guy, or win 800 games, 900 games or 1,000—it ain’t about that. This thing, as long as the focus is on those kids—how do I get them to grow as young men?"

When the season ends, it’s about them. It’s not about the program.

SN: Has that always been the philosophy, or is that something you’ve developed over time?

CALIPARI: When I was at UMass, it wasn’t that big a deal. Now, at Memphis it started becoming that because we recruited better players. And that’s what I started doing.

But during the season, as you can tell, it’s all about our team. Let’s worry about being good college players and being a good college team. Everything else on the back burners. Let’s just do that, and then the other stuff will take care of itself.

Because you don’t think they’re thinking about it? You don’t think they look at lists? You’re kidding yourself. Any coach that says, “My kids don’t worry about that”—you’re out of your mind. You’re living in a fantasy world. They all worry about it. They’re all seeing where they’re rated.

SN: There is a backlash to the fact you’ve had X number of players go to the NBA after one year: What’s your response to that?

CALIPARI: The other way is recruit players who aren’t quite as good, who don’t have the opportunity. That’s one. What I see happening around the country is, you lose players when it’s time for these others to step up and be the stars, they’re not good enough. And you end up going to the NIT or worse. You go on losing streaks. How will the fans like that here? They like losing? You can’t do it.

The second thing I would tell you—it’s an easy response: I (could) bulldoze ’em, brainwash ’em and make ’em stay. I will never do it. Get another coach. Because if it were my son, I wouldn’t want my son treated that way.

SN: The persistent complaint about the one-and-done concept is a player can go to class first semester, pass two classes and play the rest of the year.

CALIPARI: In all the years, I think I’ve had one guy that stopped going to class the second term after the season ended. That kid had A’s and B’s. He chose to not go. I have no idea why. I really haven’t spent time with him anymore—don’t talk to him much—because, again, you owe it to the program now to finish your term.

The guys who can’t recruit the good players say, “Oh, I didn’t want those guys because they’ll stop going to class.” If they don’t go to class, they can’t play. How do we have the highest APR in the SEC? Because it mattered. They all went to class, did what they were supposed to do; we weren’t penalized for them leaving early.

If they know you’re being loyal to them, guess what? They’ll be loyal to you. If you’re using them to win more games, the minute the season’s over, they’re out.

SN: Why do you think you’ve had, over the last 15 to 20 years, a challenged relationship with the media generally?

CALIPARI: If I think a guy’s wrong, I’m going to tell him. If I think a guy’s being a jerk, I’m going to tell him. If I think a guy is trying to represent other coaches to damage me and my program, I’m going to tell him. And he’s not going to be treated like a friend.

The way I grew up: You come at me, I come back at you twice. If you let him come at you, he comes back at you again and he keeps coming.

Probably not the best way to deal with the media.

SN: Something people use against you a lot are the vacated Final Fours. One thing we wondered, how do the players who were on those teams feel about that designation?

CALIPARI: I wouldn’t be surprised if the Memphis kids come back and sue the NCAA. Those guys are saying, “We earned those wins. ... None of us knew anything about anything, Coach. That’s wrong. Why are they punishing me and the number of wins I had?” Like, Antonio Anderson and Robert Dozier had the most wins of anyone over a four-year period, but they take away 38.

They’re not going to be around long. The NCAA will not. Before I retire from coaching, they will no longer oversee college athletics. They will, but it won’t be the four power conferences—they’ll be on their own. And the main thing is, do you really care about these kids? They’ll get mad that I say it. The NCAA Tournament, for example. It’s more about the selection committee getting on TV, everybody getting their tickets on the aisle, down low, all the parties they go to, the traveling. But we don’t take the parents of the participants. But they take their kids and their families.

The officials will get better hotels than some of their teams. And I know it for a fact. The decisions they make on the $2,000 (expense allowance for student-athletes)—it should have been $4,000. It’s a stipend. It’s not salary. It’s not “pay-for-play.” It’s a stipend. It’s expenses. And then schools vote against it. All this stuff piles up to where people are going to say, “Enough’s enough.”

SN: One of the interesting things about the vacated Final Fours is Louisville promotes Rick Pitino as the only coach to take three different schools to the Final Four. Do you look at that as a shot at you?

CALIPARI: No. Don’t care. Don’t care. I’m not doing it for that. Other guys are doing it to be the only guy, to win the games, to try to do this and this, to promote themselves as the “only” guy—I don’t do it. I don’t care.

SN: Is that a product of what came out of the Nets experience, having the freedom that money provided?

CALIPARI: Early on in my career, it was all about me, when I was at UMass. Why? Well, I took over one of the worst programs in the decade of the ’80s, had a young staff, had a family. If I had failed, I wasn’t getting a job from Dad. I bought them their house. I couldn’t live in their basement. I had nowhere to fall.

When I decided to make what I do about everybody else—including my assistant coaches getting jobs, including my secretaries and the people around me, making sure I reward everybody—when everything is about everything else, people in this community I can help ... life becomes easier. All of a sudden, it becomes more rewarding.

I’m not saying it to make myself better than anybody. But if you’re asking me, that’s how I approach this. So if someone says, “I’ve won more games than him, I’m a better coach than him.” Have at it! Good! How about that? I’ll give it to you. You take it. You are the best coach. You and Naismith invented this stuff. I’m just a schmo who rolls out balls. I’m good with that. At the end of the day, it’s about other people. Not me.

FROM SI.COM

CALIPARI: Nah. I’m good. My whole thing right now is, I’ve got maybe the best job in basketball. You could argue the point. But I would tell you, I’ve been here three years. We changed teams all three years. But I’m still getting good enough guys to sustain.

The NBA’s a different deal. The last time I went, financially it was a factor. I became the highest-paid coach in the NBA. I don’t need to make decisions based on finances, where before—someone comes at you with $15 million? What? I’m in. Let me try. I think I can do this. I mean, it wasn’t the only reason. But let me tell you, it played a part. Now, I don’t see a number that would make me say, “I’d do it because of that.”

SN: If you were in charge of all basketball, give us a few things you would change.

CALIPARI: I’d have football in one term and basketball would be in the other term. It wouldn’t overlap.

There would be a stipend, probably in the area of $4,000 to $5,000, and I’m talking men and women, all the athletes.

I would tell you it would be four superconferences. The reason is, they want parity. “I can’t pay the stipend and he can’t, so I’m voting against it.” Well, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s why we have to separate.

I would tell you that the families would travel to all the championship events with the team. Take a charter, jump on the charter, it doesn’t cost any more. You pay the hotel rooms. Not that big a deal.

If we had the superconferences, now we could deal with the agent issue. We can’t, as long as 250 schools have no dealings with agents and could care less and think it’s all a bunch of B.S. But if you had 64, 70, 80, 100 schools all dealing with the same thing, we would now attack the agent issue and do it in a different way. Maybe be more open. Maybe let kids talk to them, maybe do it like baseball—come up with ideas that fit those 80 or 64 schools.

I’d also make loans available to those families. Your son is projected to be a draft pick; if he’s projected by the NBA or Major League Baseball, if you’d like to take a loan, we’ll give it to you.

Those are common sense things, but you can’t do it with an unwieldy 350 schools. You just can’t.

SN: You didn’t address the draft rule in that.

CALIPARI: I’d make kids stay two years. We’re not drafting you. You can do what you want; you can go to Europe, you can stay two years in college. That way kids are closer to getting their college degree and they can always come back. The NBA gets a more-groomed player, and they can evaluate better and make sure they don’t make mistakes. The player is more prepared, not going to have the emotional ups and downs.

When you sign a one-and-done player, he hasn’t been through enough experiences. You don’t know how he’s going to react. The guys that left me that first year (at Kentucky) went 35-3—they had one bad shooting night or they win the national title, OK? Now they go to teams that are losing. It’s hard for them. They’ve never been in that situation.

But I don’t think you can do three. I don’t like the baseball model (where players who attend a four-year college can’t get drafted until they complete at least their junior year or are 21), mainly because you’d have 1,000 high school kids that all think they’re all going to go directly out. In baseball, it’s OK because they can go Single-A, Double-A, Triple-A. We don’t have that. “Well, we have the D-League.” Come on, man, you’re ruining kids’ lives. It’s not the same. It’s just not the same.

SN: Your first team at UK went to the Elite Eight. Your second went to the Final Four. What attributes does this team have that you think might allow them to take a couple more steps?

CALIPARI: I don’t know that, whether we’ll do more. You could lose in the first round. You could lose in the second round. It’s one-and-done. But what this team is starting to do, they’re defending better, you have guys that are filling roles pretty good. You’ve got seven to eight guys now. You’ve got a long team, and you’ve got an unselfish team. They just have to get more physical and understand in a physical game, how do I play? They’re just learning it. You have to talk more. You’ve got to huddle more. There are steps to becoming a better team.

This year’s team is more talented than last year’s team. But last year’s team became a great team. They completed each other. Will this team do it? I’m hoping. I’m talking about it. Let’s complete each other.